


faith in their hands shall snap in two

by perfidiousalbion



Category: The Little Stranger (2018), The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 06:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19987879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfidiousalbion/pseuds/perfidiousalbion
Summary: One of the unwritten sessions between Dr Faraday and Roderick, and the electricity beneath it.





	faith in their hands shall snap in two

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Dylan Thomas' 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion.'  
> Possible warning: some ableist language.

My first impressions of Rod, I’m afraid to say, were rather selfish. Instead of registering the twist of his mouth, the leaden straightness of his leg, I instead thought something along the lines of _I’ll be the one to show him he can be loved._

In a rather repulsive way, this was complete narcissism. My first thoughts were not of admiration for his steadfastness, nor pity for the sorry way the army chewed him up and spat him out again, mangled and marked. Instead, I thought of how I myself might be the one to make him better—that I could be the one, the special one, that would make all his pain go away.

Still—I maintained professionalism. It’s a coat of armour that serves me as I need, unfolding from somewhere within, and it came out in force when I saw the youthfulness of his face, buried as it was beneath a mass of scarring. My shields went up as I was on my knees before him, hands gentle and cool on his mangled leg, and looked up to see the less-marked side of his face caught in the sun. The side that looked like Roddie Ayres, a young man, strong in the bloom of his youth. And beautiful, of course—the manliness of his sister seeming strangely feminine in a male face. Perhaps it was the curve of his brow that struck the first blow through my defences. Or maybe it was the smattering of freckles across the highest point of his cheekbone, so ridiculously delicate and lovely.

I fell headlong into that strange stage of obsession when I could hardly bear to be alone with him, and so close, always so close and intimate, yet hated to be away. I relished the way he treated me—Dr Faraday, miracle doctor, professional to the core—yet I loathed it. Half of me wanted him to see me as surgically clean, the scalpel-bearing angel, and the other half wanted his eyes to close beneath my touch, to worship my flesh as I did his.

There is one particular session that springs to mind in which I suspect he caught these dual demons, dancing on both of my shoulders like leathery angels on pins. I had just stood from where I had been kneeling before him (and didn’t that position feel strangely right), had just stood by pressing a hand oh so casually and gently on his knee. I had moved away—professional, professional—and sat in the chair opposite him, ostensibly fiddling with my electronic equipment but in actuality hoping that he might talk, might confide. 

And he did, in a way. “Doctor,” he began, and then cut himself off.

I raised my eyes—just for a moment, not too long—then lowered them once more to my work. “You can be candid, you know.” Glanced at him once more, just quickly. A small smile. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.” 

He exhaled a little, that being the closest he got to a laugh these days. Then he began again in that cut-glass voice of his. “Yes, of course. Only—it’s something rather filthy, you see. Something—” he gestured to his leg before withdrawing it and rolling down his trousers with care. “Something rather horrid.”

I gave up the pretence of work and fixed him with a steady stare. Trustworthy. “Roderick, if there’s anything I can assure you of it’s that whatever it is you’re going to tell me, I’ve heard worse.” I gave a wry smile. “I’m un-shockable.”

He twisted his mouth humourlessly in a parody of a smile. I watched it. Thought how like Hundreds he was—untouchable. Inherently unknowable.

“Well—do you remember what you thought I’d come to talk to you about? That business a week or so ago—in your office?”

I remembered. The dark hurried thought, skittering through my head, that perhaps Roderick had come to confide something sordid and wonderful that I could savour like a deep liqueur. I nodded.

He began picking at his more damaged hand, rubbing his fingertips over raw raised flesh. “And how I dissuaded you from your initial assumption? God—how like a thesaurus I sound. I suppose I should just out with it, eh Doctor?” He spoke with a gusto that was betrayed by his flushed face. “You see the thing is—you weren’t entirely wrong.” He gave a breathy laugh and would not meet my eye. “And I had this rather wild notion through his whole…you know.” He gestured to his leg, to my machine. “This whole procedure that perhaps it wouldn’t just be my leg that was fixed. That somehow…oh, I don’t know. That somehow these thoughts I sometimes have would go away.”

He took a deep breath and met my eye for only a moment before looking away. I sensed that I was on a precipice—here, he’d confided something to me that I could have him arrested for, and in these few seconds of time I had complete power of the Lord of Hundreds Hall. “And they haven’t?” I asked. 

He glanced at me again. Flushed. Looked back down to his leg. I recalled, suddenly, how much time I had spent on my knees before him and knew in those few seconds of power that he had thought about me the same things I had thought about him. 

“No,” he said. His stopped fidgeting with his hands and instead fixed me with a cool, disconcertingly clear gaze. “They haven’t.”

And just like that, the power tilted. It was almost as though the entire room shifted in his favour—the high ground was his, the sun of evening through the window touched his hair and turned it to a lopsided, cow-licked crown.

My few seconds of dominance over the Lord of Hundreds had withered and here he was, over me once more, with the ball in my proverbial court. Beneath our surface conversation lay glittering currents, all unsaid—he had admitted his attraction to other men. That gave me power. I had stayed professional, enquired medically. More power to me.

And now he had responded, finally, honestly. And honesty, as anyone so stifled by stiff-upper-lip Englishness well knows, is an explosion in the face of convention.

I stood, suddenly, and crossed to the window. “Roderick—Mr Ayers.”

“Don’t.” I heard him stand, heard the drag of his leg as he crossed the room to stand behind my shoulder. “Don’t pull us back into pretending. Please—”

Here his voice went small, seemed to shrink and shrivel until all that was left was a raw, shivering mass of honesty. “Please, let us speak freely. I know this flies in the face of—well, you know. Convention, and all that. But I just…God, I just need to be honest with _someone._ I just need—”

He let out a huffing sigh that I felt on the back of my neck. My skin felt as though it crawled both to and from the touch of his breath.

He moved again, until we stood side-by-side before the grounds of Hundreds. In my peripheral vision I saw him turn to face me. I saw his hand—his bad one, but he seemed to take no notice—reach towards my face. And I turned to face him, as he touched me. I let him raise raise himself up the half-inch that separated us and move his mouth to mine, so close that I could feel the heat of his breath. I let him card his fingernails roughly against my scalp, as though trying to force some reaction from me. 

And I let him kiss me. And his mouth was soft, like a young man’s, and rough, like a wounded soldier’s. And he was desperate and patient, raking his fingernails up the back of my jacket one moment and touching his fingertips to my jaw the next. As though I was breakable, somehow.

But I did not kiss him back. Perhaps I opened my mouth—perhaps I sighed, relaxed, made some movement that was a mere shadow of the movements I wanted to make. I wanted to grasp the back of his head. I wanted to roughen the kiss and throw him back onto his own bed and strip that goddamn shirt off him and tell him that I above all else would be the one to find him beautiful and absolve him of his shame. I wanted to worship his scars and have him thus worship me as his deliverer from his hardships. I wanted to feel the electricity I had been pumping into him these past few weeks come flowing back out of his skin until all we were was a ball of glittering fire.

But I did not kiss him back, and footsteps sounded on the stairs, and he was the one to pull back, and he was the one whose face burned with shame.

And later, just before I left, it was I who forgave him.

And I who took back power. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Do drop me some feedback if you would like.


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